Tag: march

“Watching something grow is good for morale, it helps us believe in life.” -Myron S.Kaufmann

Myron Kaufmann (August 27, 1921– January 29, 2010) was an American Jewish novelist best remembered for his popular 1957 novel, Remember Me to God.

Kaufmann was raised in Belmont, Massachusetts. As a boy, he composed serial adventure stories to entertain his classmates. He was valedictorian of his Belmont High School graduating class. He attended Harvard University with a concentration in biochemistry. After graduating in 1943, he entered the U.S. Army where he was trained as a Japanese translator.

Remember Me to God is set at Harvard. It deals with identity, assimilation, and the struggle of the son of Jewish immigrants to enter American society. At the time of his 25th Harvard reunion, he wrote:

“The existence of a vigorous orthodox Jewish community on the Harvard campus was inconceivable in our time. About two years ago I walked in on a group of Harvard students on an ordinary sabbath eve. As soon as ten were present, a service began. There followed a kosher dinner until someone began the grace-after-meals. After that psalms were sung in the original tongue…. For the past few years Kosher TV dinners have been available in the House dining halls upon a surcharge of fifty cents … how impossible it was twenty-five years ago for all this to exist—how impossible it was to believe it ever could exist. We had not the skill, we had not the knowledge. We had not the will.”[4]

Critic Louis Harap considers Remember Me To God to be “a memorable treatment of the problem” of Jewish identity and assimilation in America.[5]

Today, the novel is perhaps as widely read by sociologists and historians of the American Jewish experience, as by literary critics.